


Empty Mattress

by MILKYWON



Category: GOT7
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Minor GOT7 (Ensemble), Not Beta Read, Sorry Not Sorry, asshole jaebum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 16:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13662492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MILKYWON/pseuds/MILKYWON
Summary: Mark wonders what’s so wrong about love, why they couldn’t just leave him alone? Jaebum gives up.





	Empty Mattress

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of the song “Twin Sized Mattress” by the Front Bottoms.

He wonders why this was so bad. Why loving someone despite being the same gender was such a big deal. Why ruin someone’s entire life just because you don’t like the way they live? Mark ponders about the subject, trying to connect things together and get an answer people would usually answer with an _‘I don’t know’_ , and it’s such bullshit.

  
If it wasn’t for this, Jaebum wouldn’t be miles away being brainwashed, people trying to tell him to change. It took long enough for Mark to help Jaebum out of his ‘homophobic’ stupor. Jaebum never hated the gays, he was just told to. Mark was his outing, he opened Jaebum’s eyes and it lead him to a camp where they’d try and drill words into his brain.

  
Mark remembers the day Jaebum had come back, hair short due to the counselors shaving it off. The older sighs as he can’t feel the same softness from before. They’d met up at the lake to just hangout, to celebrate their friend finally coming back seemingly unchanged. He was still the same.

  
But Mark remembers the way people reacted when Jaebum had kissed his first boy, so when Mark’s lips touched Jaebum’s, it felt so nice. But the increasing beat of the Jaw’s theme song was on repeat, and he couldn’t shake the feeling of dread off. He was terrified, wondering what would happen to Jaebum if anyone else knew they kissed.

 

 

 

  
Mark tried, he really did. Trying to explain to Jaebum’s parents that this was indeed, normal. He wasn’t making things worst, he wasn’t pinning the blame on anyone, and wasn’t mentioning the fact that that their son was like this. Jaebum’s father was fine with it, but his mother was furious.

  
Venom and poison would drip from her mouth as she tries to slither words into Jaebum’s ears to tell him about how much she doesn’t accept it, how much she doesn’t like it.

  
Jaebum’s mother is a small woman, holds herself high. She looks harmless, a light glow to her face. But her words are so sharp, and their father hasn’t the heart to stop her, seemingly scared of his wife too.

  
After the argument, Mark’s sporting a bruise to his cheek.

  
Jaebum had hit him.

  
Yelling at him why exactly Mark made him this way, why he told him it was okay. Make only listens, cradling the bruise as he takes every word, hating how it sounded when said by the younger. It hurt, but Mark will take everything, and he’ll always think it as his fault.

  
(In the end, Jaebum and him make up.)

 

 

 

  
“Thank you, Mark.” It was the night of the day they made up. And only a few days before Jaebum would be sent away.

  
“For what?” The older shouldn’t be thanked for anything, still set on the fact he had caused so much trouble already.

  
“For everything,” Jaebum said. “For staying especially, I don’t know what I’d do without you.” He kisses Mark’s forehead, hand caressing the side of Mark’s face that wasn’t pressed against his chest.

  
“I love you.”

  
“I love you.” Jaebum still found it weird to say, but he let that thought drown somewhere for it to resurface again later. He hopes it never becomes something he think about again.

 

 

 

  
It was no surprise though, when Jaebum had knocked on his door, eyes sad. He told Mark about leaving to camp, his parents finding out about what had happened. That night, they stayed awake to hold each other close. The younger assuring Mark that he’d come back the same, that it’d be okay in the end.

  
When it was time to separate, Mark was reluctant. Wanting to make sure he’d remember his promise, wondering if he’d come back and actually stay.

  
It’d be a luxury.

 

 

 

  
Even after all the fun though, Jaebum is back on Mark’s doorstep to say goodbye. Mark is confused, Jaebum was now old enough to make his own decisions, why decide to go back?

  
“I want to become a counselor there.” Mark’s legs started to shake. A feeling of dread. 

  
“What?”

  
“Look Mark, I know about what we were back then,” he said, sighing. “And as much as I don’t hate it, I don’t think this should continue.”

  
“You promised.” Mark said, trying to keep his voice steady.

  
“I know.”

  
“Please stay.” Mark whispered this time, the breath knocked out, Mark can’t breathe. Jaebum is pushing his head into the water and letting him up for small gasps, lungs filled with water.

  
“Hey man I love you,” Jaebum laughs. “But no fucking way.” The younger says so jokingly.

  
“You don’t have to do this!” Mark yells, and for the first time, Jaebum is taken aback. “We can...we can start a band, and you can sing and I’ll harmonize, hell I’ll play the tambourine.” He holds onto the taller’s hands.

  
“I know how much you love to sing, and we can make that happen.” He was hopeful, searching into Jaebum’s eyes for something, anything. But he’s let down when he shakes his head.

  
“I’ll see you again, Mark.” He’s gone again, this time without a proper goodbye. No staying up to savor the last moments they’ll have with each other.

  
It’s fucked up, Mark would think. How love is a choice only if it’s acceptable to others. Mark would scrunch his nose in disgust knowing how people would say love is love only if it’s from a straight couple.

 

 

 

  
A year or two later, Mark hasn’t heard from Jaebum. His mother boasting about how her son is so much happier now, on the right path, but that news was half a year ago at the least.

  
The last time Mark had ever talked to Jaebum’s mother was when they bumped into one another, the woman giving him a nasty glare as she did the one thing she was good at. Complain.

  
“I knew it was a phase, you and my son,” she said sternly, lips pressed together. “Knew he wasn’t going to follow in the path of someone like you.”

  
“Some like me?” Mark asked unamused, but still frightened to be talking to the same woman that gave him nightmares.

  
“Yes, someone like you,” she snapped back. “My son wouldn’t have had to go through camp and spend long periods of time without his own family. He wouldn’t be questioning himself and settled with a nice girl. Not a man that can’t provide for himself.”

  
“I am well off by myself ma’am.” Mark said, offended that a well off man was worst than a woman that only had power from their parents. (No offense)

  
“You know what Mark?” she whispered threateningly, finger pointed at him. “I hope you’re cursed to sleep upon a twin sized mattress.” She says.

  
Mark understood exactly what she meant.

  
“I hope you stay locked up in an attic, never getting the chance to graduate,” she says. “I hope your nightmares have nightmares every night.” And she walks away, heels clicking.

  
Mark always found her way of words so different. He knew she was a literature major back then when she was younger, and so is he currently, so it gave him such chills to hear it. Goosebumps on his arms.

He walks away, hands in his pocket as he repeats every word.

 

 

 

  
“We’ll stay like this forever, right Mark?” Jaebum asks one night. Holding Mark close to his body.

  
“As long as you want.” Mark would whisper.

 

 

 

  
_‘I hope your nightmares have nightmares every night.’_

 

 

 


End file.
